Last night, the Senate failed for the third straight week to pass an extension of unemployment benefits. The standalone bill could “only” muster 58 votes, two short of the required 60. Both Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins voted for the 6-month, $34 billion dollar extension, but Ben Nelson voted against it, and with Robert Byrd’s seat currently vacant the measure fell shy (Harry Reid voted against it as a procedural matter, so he could bring it up again).

Despite this setback, there presumably would be 60 votes for passage once Byrd is replaced by West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, a Democrat. In his message after the vote, Reid said, after expressing his disappointment, that “we will vote on this measure again once there is a replacement named for the late Senator Byrd.” In other words, they’ll vote on it again when the votes are there. And after the July 4 recess, they’ll have them.

Of course, by that time 2 million unemployed Americans will have seen their lives disrupted by their benefits running out. Under the bill they would get retroactive benefits, but who knows if they will still have a place to live at that time, or enough food to make it? Stores and landlords typically don’t take IOUs because the Senate can’t get their act together.

The Senate did do something else last night. They passed an extension of the closing deadline for the homebuyer’s tax credit. The credit expired on April 30, but Reid and others claimed that an application backlog would deny many their $8,000. So the bill extended the closing date from June 30 to September 30. This will in all likelihood invite backdating and fraud. The House had already passed this paid-for (except for the fraud), standalone bill, so it goes to the President.

The next time unemployment comes up, it will be as a completely standalone bill.